She practiced monastically at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, has studied Buddhism in Thailand and Japan, and served as the teacher for the Bolinas branch of the Mountain Source Sangha from 2008 to 2011.

After 15 years of residential practice at Zen Center, she felt called to find ways to help make awareness practices more accessible to the wider world and received professional coaching certification from New Ventures West in San Francisco. Her coaching practice draws on her background in Zen Buddhist training to help her clients uncover and embody their authenticity, creativity, and vision, both personally and professionally. Since 2008 she has taught beginning and advanced classes on integrating mindfulness practice into work and life at the biotech firm Genentech, as well as leading daylong and overnight corporate retreats. She has designed and taught classes on mindfulness at Twitter and has coached leaders from Zynga and Google on developing awareness and presence.

She also is a member of the Global Leadership Network, a foundation created to support the development of leadership capacity through integrating personal development with organizational and societal transformation.

She received her BA degree in English from Stanford University and an MA, also in English, from the University of Texas at Austin. Before encountering Zen, she worked in the publishing industry in New York and Tokyo. Currently she lives at Green Gulch with her husband, Jeremy, and their daughter, Elizabeth.